


Use Your Brain Unless It's Been Eaten

by snowflakeofdestruction



Series: Family Matters [8]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Family Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29964795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowflakeofdestruction/pseuds/snowflakeofdestruction
Summary: When one of Roxas and Axel's daughters develops a new fear, namely being eaten by zombies, they try and reassure her, though it would help if they had been able to agree on a tactic ahead of time.“Zombies aren’t real, I promise,” Roxas chimed in.Axel frowned at him over Salena’s head. “Well, we both know that isn’t true. We’ve met plenty of zombies.”
Relationships: Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: Family Matters [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020523
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Use Your Brain Unless It's Been Eaten

“A..aand and…” Salena gulped in spurts of air, but still didn’t seem to be able to catch her breath. Tears fell steadily, and her arms were tight around Axel’s neck as he held her, rubbing his daughter’s back and walking her around the room like he had when she was a colicky baby. 

“Take your time, sweetie,” Axel advised, ever patient despite being roused from a dead sleep a few minutes ago by Salena screaming bloody murder because she’d had a bad dream and annihilating his shin on furniture that had jumped out at him as he and Roxas ran to the twins’ room to make sure that it wasn’t something worse. Roxas sat on Dulce’s bed, murmuring words of comfort to their other daughter and petting her hair, trying to help her just drift back off instead of wake up fully. One member of the family should get some rest.

“And they will come out of the ground!” Salena continued recounting her dream and the fears it had sparked, voice growing stronger, but turning shrill. ”The graves! They will come out of _graveyard_ ground and their eyeballs will be hanging just like…” She waved her arms wildly and then patted her cheek where a hanging eyeball would be. Axel held onto her more tightly now that she wasn’t holding onto him, and nodded compassionately as she continued to ramble in fragments as excited children were apt to do. “…There on their faces by their nose, except it’s only half a nose and they will go braaaains while stretching out their arms. Just like that. Braaaains. And they have a really spooky voice, and they will climb up the walls and come in through my window and eat my brain.” 

“Zombies aren’t real, I promise,” Roxas chimed in from his place on the bed as soon as there was a pause. He repeated it more softly for Dulce’s benefit, since her eyes had snapped back open and she was breathing heavily with sympathetic hysteria like she was about to restart the cycle of crying. “Zombies do not exist.”

Axel frowned at him over Salena’s head. “Well, we both know that isn’t true. We’ve met plenty of zombies.”

Roxas glared daggers at him. “But they can’t climb, _right_ _Axel_?”

“That’s specist,” Axel retorted. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what Roxas was trying to do. He just didn’t see anything but harm in the long-run if they started lying to the girls to make things easier. They wanted to maintain trust. “Most zombies are perfectly nice people-like monsters who only want to do their jobs.” The truth only took a few more words. Of course, their job typically consisted of scaring children, but that didn’t need to be said.

“And they don’t live on this planet,” Roxas stressed, and Axel actually had to give him that point. He should have thought to start there.

Dulce sat up, fully awake now and calm, eyes bright with interest. “Do they eat brains?” Her tone was one of curiosity not of fear. It was story time. Learning about other planets was one of her favorite things.

Salena echoed her, sounding much more mournful, still struggling with doubt even though her daddies had clearly faced the zombies and lived. “Do they eat brains?”

“Only the brains that come out of Dr. Finkelstein’s lab,” Roxas answered quickly before Axel could say he didn’t know and had never thought to ask.

“If you’re good, we’ll take you to meet some zombies next week. You can ask them all the questions you want, and learn they aren’t that scary,” Axel promised, trying to placate everyone at once.

Roxas made a doubtful noise. He wasn’t sure about taking the twins to Halloweentown. _He_ barely liked going to Halloweentown still. He and Axel would have to have a long conversation before Axel made any other promises. 

Luckily, this promise Salena was already letting them out of.

“I don’t want to meet the zombies!” she warbled, panicked, with hands scrambling to lock around Axel’s neck as she buried her face again.

“Then we’ll only do it if you’re bad then,” Axel amended, patting her back.

“Axel!” Roxas snapped harshly. “Not funny!” The twins were young. They couldn’t always just figure out when daddies were joking.

Salena started crying again. It was going to be a long night.


End file.
